M.K. Gandhi

A 24 year old Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi stepped on South African soil in 1893; quit 1914. Historian Ramachandra Guha in his Gandhi book quotes a Cape Town friend: 'You gave us a lawyer, we gave you a Mahatma.' Ashwin Desai and Goolam Vahed in The South African Gandhi are not sure; they have burst the Mahatma myth; am no historian; have read the two renderings with Desai and Goolam better; not in style but facts. There is the official telling, to be largely dismissed, as it is proper and prim. President Nelso Mandela wrote in Time in 1999: 'India is Gandhi's country of birth; South Africa his country of adoption.' South African President Thabo Mbeki said on the release of Gandhi film: ' ....We now know that the greatness of his soul was not limited only to people of Indian descent who called him 'Mahatma',  but to the human race as a whole.' The recent South Africa-India cricket series was dubbed Gandhi-Mandela. Gandhi kept Africans away, did not mingle with them, did not fight their cause; kafirs, he put them out. For Gandhi, Indians, pitched in the dust by a white South African regime, stand apart from kafirs. Gandhi had written as early as 1903 that Indians 'believe as much in the purity of race as we think they (the whites) do' and had conceded that the white race of South Africa should be the predominating race. It is therefore difficult to represent Gandhi as one of South Africa's anti-apartheid fighters.' Much evidence of Gandhian illiberality is stacked up by Desai and Vahed. They can also be biased as all historians are; impartiality cannot have space in human kind. They are in agreement with Patrick French: ..the point is not that someone born in the 19th century should be expected to have 21st century racial attitudes; it is that, even by the reformist standards of his own time, he was regressive. Gandhi's blanking of Africans is the black hole at the heart of his saintly mythology.' And with indentured Indians, Gandhi sometimes preferred the merchant class. What hurts most is Gandhi objecting to his son Manilal marrying a Muslim girl Fatima. Gandhi wrote: 'Faith is not a thing like a garment which can be changed to suit your convenience' and if both retained their beliefs, 'it will be like putting two swords into one sheath.' Gandhi was concerned 'that the marriage will have a powerful impact on the Hindu-Muslim question. Intercommunal marriages are not solution to the problem...It will be impossible, for you, I think, after this to come and settle in India.' Preached non-violence, supported British war effort in South Africa and India. Believed in caste categories. And Indian Independence, with million slaughtered, was non-violent by no evidence. At the top were Gandhi, Nehru and Sardar Patel. Years ago trying to understand Gandhi willingly went with the telling of Mahatma; today, the Mahatma has fallen off.  Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, yes.